Daily Archives: September 9, 2012

Every year Slow Food Seattle organizes a “Day of Service”. To celebrate Day of Service we ask our members to join us as volunteers to help an organization with common values. Our Board has decided to focus our efforts this year on organizations that are cultivating and harvesting urban-grown food. The Slow Food Seattle Board nominated two great organizations for us to support for Day of Service—City Fruit and Alleycat Acres.

City Fruit promotes the cultivation of urban fruit in order to nourish people, build community and protect the climate. City Fruit helps tree owners grow healthy fruit, provide assistance in harvesting and preserving fruit, promote the sharing of extra fruit, and work to protect urban fruit trees.

Alleycat Acres connects people with food, through community run farms in under-utilized urban spaces. By farming the cityscape, we are helping to create solutions that address a number of issues facing our communities. Our urban farms lay the groundwork to enable anyone to join in the process of what we refer to as Farming 2.0: cultivating food, relationships, and a connection to our land in an urban setting.

In years past we’ve chosen one organization among those that were nominated. This year the Board was a little indecisive. Since City Fruit and Alleycat Acres are both so worthy we said, “Hey, let’s support both!” It’s a tall task. We think we are up to it, but we need your help. We’re going to need twice as many volunteers this year because on September 22 one team of volunteers is going to help City Fruit and another team is going to help Alleycat Acres.

Board member Rob Salvino will lead the City Fruit volunteer team. Board member Renai Mielke will lead the Alleycat Acres volunteer team. To make things interesting we’re going to have a friendly competition to see who can recruit more volunteers—Rob or Renai. Visit our Facebook event page to learn more about the day’s activities and sign up for Rob’s City Fruit team or Renai’s Alleycat Acres team.

Join Team City Fruit!
The Slow Food Seattle volunteers who join Team City Fruit will maintain fruit trees along the Burke-Gilman Trail. The Burke-Gilman Trail Urban Orchard Stewards of the City Fruit program rescued 22 apple and pear trees along 1 1/2 miles of the Burke-Gilman Trail between the University Bridge and Gasworks Park. These trees provide fruit for passersby and for foodbanks. Team City Fruit will be weeding, planting daffodils, spreading mulch, and mooning bicyclists. Actually, that last part was just a joke. Mooning of cyclists will not be allowed. Even without the mooning we will have fun while lending a hand for a worthy cause. More details on time and location to come as the date nears!

Join Team Alleycat Acres!
The Slow Food Seattle volunteers who join Team Alleycat Acres will be working at the newest farm site on East Cherry St. & MLK in the Central District. We’ll be working on putting the garden to bed for winter- laying mulch and cover crops, and planting seeds and bulbs for spring crops. Many of these crops will be later donated to local food banks- delivered exclusively by bicycle! We’ll also have the opportunity to join in with another event happening at the same time – a local honey tasting, and talk with Alleycat’s residential beekeeper from Urban Bee Company. We’ll be meeting at the site at 9 AM and working until 1 PM. Please feel free to join us for any amount of time, or even just pop by around noon to check out the bees! Be sure to dress for the weather, and bring plenty of water.

When you RSVP for this event, please let us know in your comment which group you’d like to team up with. Feel free to bring kids, friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, etc, but please leave pets at home.